Craig Petty, like you've never seen him before...
You've probably seen this video. It's done it's done the rounds in high school psychology classrooms the world over. A group of people pass a basketball back and forth to each other, and an observer is asked to count how many times it's passed. By hyper focusing on that specific task, most people won't notice that in the middle of the video, a man in a gorilla suit struts right through the group.
Don't worry, we haven't become a newsletter dedicated to the social sciences. Here's where the magic comes in.
Craig Petty looked watched that video (it's unclear at press time if he noticed or did not notice the gorilla), and realized that premise would translate very well to a packet trick. So, he made APE: A Perception Experiment.
In APE, you have three cards that are printed with basketballs. You give your spectators 3 seconds to count the number of balls on each card. Just like the social experiment, it doesn't matter what their final count is, because it's guaranteed they missed the gorilla.
You pass all three cards back out to reveal there is now a giant, basketball-playing, tennis shoe-clad gorilla that stretches across all three.
You missed the gorilla, DO NOT MISS APE.
APE is available at any Murphy's Magic dealer, or you can check out with our featured dealer, J&B Magic! |
